While William F. Buckley’s slogan was the original rallying cry for post-War conservatives, as Jonah Goldberg and Radley Balko have each noted, it’s become the unconscious catchphrase of the post-JFK left, who’ve lost confidence in both themselves and western civilization as a whole.
Standing athwart history is the thread that ties together two otherwise very different stories in this Roger Friedman article. As the lead discusses, Leonardo DiCaprio’s environmental religious beliefs are designed primarily to greatly hinder the expansion of technology and business (presumably not his, of course, but no critic will ever ask him that, lest he be dropped from the Hollywood gravy train).
And at the tail-end of Friedman’s article, woe betide the man who seeks to modernize Manhattan, he notes:
New Yorkers don’t like it when you mess with our history.
Donald Trump, for example, went into the record books when he secretly destroyed the front doors of Bonwit Teller to make room for Trump Tower in 1990.
New York University is reviled by some alumni as it has devoured Greenwich Village and stamped it with concrete and glass. Killing The Bottom Line nightclub was the cherry on the top of that sundae.
Last week, CBGB’s founder Hilly Kristal died at age 75 from lung cancer. But last year, a person named Muzzy Rosenblatt and a group called the Bowery Residents Committee cracked Kristal when they determined to close the legendary Lower East Side rock club and replace it with something more profitable. Appropriately, they still haven’t found a tenant. Rosenblatt and friends must be so proud.
Iggy Pop threw up there once in 1977–it must be worth saving!
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